Reviews:
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Finally, a LEGO game that truly captures the essence of both its creative and functional play in digital form
While I’m a life-long LEGO fan who has spent far too many hours playing with a variety of sets as a kid and enjoying their many digital iterations over time either solo or with family and friends as an adult, it has always been a disappointment that the games inspired by the bricks have never done a great job of capturing the essence of building with them. Whether the games have simply been focused on action, overly quick or simple builds that lack that certain spark, or just a bit aimless overall, none of them have approximated the creative and very engineering-esque aspect of using a bunch of seemingly mismatched parts to make something spectacular. Bricktales does precisely that, providing you with a light adventure, exploring a variety of themed kingdoms, but everything you do to progress is focused purely on builds. These range from practical (building bridges, stairs, or more complex usable objects) to fantastic (building your own amusement park attraction elements) and a little bit of everything in between. What’s great, though, is that the parts you have to work with often aren’t obviously made for the task, requiring you to use a bit of ingenuity to make the most of the situation. Aside from generally being pretty forgiving with the physics I found it interesting that there’s no set solution, you can be stingy with parts and make it work or you can choose to try to make use of just about every part you can and go elaborate. You’re truly empowered to choose your path, your style, and see what you can make happen. Now, with larger builds with more complex pieces there can be some performance stutters, but they are intermittent. My only other concern for younger gamers is that I’m not sure they won’t need some help as the game progresses and gets more elaborate, or perhaps at first with understanding how to master the controls do take some getting used to, but are as well-implemented as I can imagine given the complexity of interacting with 3 dimensional objects you’re trying to assemble. In the end though, Bricktales is an absolute love letter to LEGO and all of its fans around the world.
Justin Nation, Score:Nindie Choice! [9.1]